


I'll Find You Another Time

by ViaLethe



Category: The Almighty Johnsons
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon Relationships, Gen, Season/Series 03, Sibling Bonding, Yuletide 2013
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-19
Updated: 2013-12-19
Packaged: 2018-01-05 04:13:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1089496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ViaLethe/pseuds/ViaLethe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not that Axl hates his brothers, exactly.  It's just that they're so extra-spectacularly useless in the matter of Frigg-finding.</p>
<p>Or, <i>Five Other Ways the Johnsons Might Have Stumbled Across the Frigg.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	I'll Find You Another Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ariana Deralte (ArianaDeralte)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArianaDeralte/gifts).



> Takes place in various alternate versions of S3; spoilers for the entire series.

**_I. Olaf – In which everything goes to plan for once._ **

Well, that had been far, far too easy.

“Is it just me being a natural worrier, or was that far too easy?” Ingrid looks nearly as confused as he feels, which, in his experience, is rarely a good sign. She's also got a bit of pond goo stuck to her foot, but somehow it doesn't seem like the opportune time to mention that.

“My thoughts precisely.” Not that this isn't a charming little scene, and not that he isn't happy for Gaia and Axl (though they are giving new meaning to the phrase 'PDA', even by his admittedly lax standards), but still, Olaf's oracle sense is tingling off the charts.

“Aw, come on, Grandpa. Can't you just be happy for them?”

“It's not that we aren't happy for them, Mikkel,” he says, catching Ingrid's eye. “It's just that...well...”

“Things are never this easy for you lot,” Ingrid supplies, and rubs her foot in the grass in what she probably thinks is a surreptitious manner. “It's a bit worrying, frankly.”

“You know, I honestly think they might fall in the pond,” Anders says, and just about now, everything would be going a lot better in Olaf's head if people would stop joining the conversation and shut up. “What's with the gloomy faces over here?”

Mike rolls his eyes. That might have to do with Anders, but might also have to do with Helen, who's clinging to Anders' side. Speaking truthfully, that's more or less the natural reaction to Helen. “Our wise and respected oracles here seem to think Gaia actually being the Frigg is too easy, despite all the many, _many_ wrong turns it took to get us here in the first place.”

“Oh. Well, now that you mention it, I don't exactly feel a wave of godly power pulsing through me. Maybe they need to screw first?”

“I'd say they're not far from it,” Helen points out, and yes, as unpleasant as it is to agree with her, Olaf has to agree.

“Oh dear,” Ingrid murmurs. “You know, he does have a point. About the whole godly-power thing. D'you think we might have fucked it up somewhere along the way?”

Clearly this is about to turn into yet another round of blame-the-oracle, which is familiar if wholly unwelcome territory. “We obviously didn't fuck it up _completely_ ,” he says. “I mean, the two of them are getting on just as newly reunited spouses should. It is possible, however, that we were a bit fuzzy on the details of what comes _after_ the reunion.”

“Right, and now they've fallen in. Good luck fishing the noble leaders of our pantheon out of the muck,” Anders says, clapping Mike on the shoulder and turning to go. “Let me know if somebody figures out the next step in this seemingly interminable quest, will you?”

“Are you thinking what I'm thinking?” Ingrid asks, as Mike goes scrambling down the bank towards the sodden happy couple.

“Most definitely,” Olaf says, rubbing his forehead. “We require thinking juice. And my stash.”

**_II. Mike – In which certain Gods have many names._ **

He should never have taken this bar.

Okay, that's not quite fair – what he really never should have done was let his brothers _know_ he'd taken this bar, and then he wouldn't have situations like this on his hands every single time he turned around.

“C'mon Mike, I'm sick of this stupid quest.” That would be problem number one, Axl, half sitting, half leaning on the bar, whining and moaning as always. “Can't we just make a bet about it or something?”

Needless to say, Axl's also drinking beers on the house, and how those keep managing to appear even though the bar's been closed for months is a mystery to Mike. “How d'you mean?”

“I dunno, like – you say, 'Hey Axl, bet you'll find the Frigg by Friday' and I say 'You're on' and there we have it?”

“Yes, brilliant plan. You'll probably run her over with your pathetic car while you're out delivering someone's greasy pizza.” And there's problem number two, right on cue. What Anders is doing in his bar in the middle of the day, sprawled at a corner table with his best remaining bottle of bourbon, Mike really cannot fathom.

“Shut up, Anders,” Axl mutters, which is a statement Mike can always get on board with.

“No, no, I mean it,” Anders says, smirking. “By all means, go on, make use of Ullr's brilliant powers, for when have they ever been known to fail us all in spectacular fashion?”

“Piss off,” Mike says, though without any heat; Anders is never going to get over the loss of Agnetha's money, and he's never going to get over Anders' tendency to be, well, Anders, so that's that.

“Come on,” Axl says. “I mean really, at this point, what have we got to lose?” And there he goes with the damn puppy dog eyes. Axl'd always been a pro with that face, ever since he was nine years old, begging his big brother for action figures and money for the arcade. Mike always figured Anders had taught him that one.

He lasts a whole fifteen seconds before he cracks, but it's an improvement; back when Axl was little it never took more than ten. “Okay, okay, fine.” Still, he can't help rolling his eyes, because he already knows damn well this isn't going to work; a bet against chance itself never does. Then again, no reason why he can't have a little fun with it, since Michele had mentioned that Ingrid was due to pop in any minute now, and while Ingrid's a very nice lady, she is most definitely not Axl's ideal Frigg. “Hey Axl, I bet you the next woman you see will be the Frigg.”

At least it has the effect of cheering Axl the fuck up. “Woohoo, that's more like it! You are so on, Mike.”

Of course, the one thing neither Mike nor Ullr had counted on was Michele choosing that exact moment to come down the stairs.

“Are you boys celebrating something in particular, or just your usual nothing at all?” she calls, and then stops dead, staring at Axl as the lights flicker overhead, before going out entirely with a loud pop and a faint whiff of smoke.

“Uh, Mike?” Anders asks, sitting up straight, “Is that due to you being a shitty electrician or did your girlfriend just level up in terms of the pantheon?”

“Sjofn's basically Frigg,” Michele says quietly, though it's loud as a scream to Mike, loud enough that he can hear it perfectly well over the voice in his head yelling, _No, I didn't mean for this to happen, anything but this_. “Except not so much.”

“I think you kind of just became so much,” Axl says, sliding off his barstool, and it's like watching two people on strings, the way they just sort of glide towards each other like they're being pulled.

“Tough luck, bro,” Anders says, coming up behind him to put a hand on his shoulder that's probably meant to be comforting. Unfortunately for Anders, it's more of a reminder of things he's tried to forget; watching Axl look at Michele like that is kind of like watching history repeat itself, with a brother of his and a woman he loves on one side of a door, and him stuck on the other side looking in.

Before he can stop and think, before he can even take two seconds to comprehend what he's doing and how unbelievably stupid it is, he's managed to elbow Anders in the gut and step forward, past the end of the bar and right between his potential king and queen.

“Frigg's not the only one with more than one identity,” he says, looking Axl square in the face. “Odin has other names too. Such as Ullr.”

Dimly, he can hear Anders wheezing and laughing behind the bar as he turns to Michele. “So it seems to me you have a choice to make.”

He's not exactly sure what he's expecting here – a heartfelt outpouring of love, a sign of some fucking respect, a chance that for once, just once, somebody will say, _“Yeah, you know what Mike, I do love you the most after all”_ – but even as he looks at her face, he knows that's not the kind of goddess Michele is. Never has been, and as recently as this morning, that's what he'd loved about her.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” she says, looking almost offended. “Him. He is Odin, end of story. I practically _made_ him Odin, for fuck's sake.”

The moment seems to last forever, like that split second balanced at the top of a ladder where you know you're going to fall, hanging there in the air waiting for gravity to smash you into the dirt.

“We should probably go find Olaf,” Axl says finally, glancing between the two of them before making a hasty exit, and it takes every single bit of control he's got for Mike to not chase after him and try to smash his little brother's face in, for all the good the attempt would do him.

Michele lingers behind for a minute, and he wants to scream at her too, wants his whole bloody family and every fucking god that ever walked the planet out of his bar and out of his life. But of course, Michele's never been afraid of his anger, or of anybody else's for that matter.

“If you would have asked me to choose between Mike and Axl,” she says, “it would have been Mike, no question.”

“Yeah?” he asks, against his better judgment. Fucking ironic that Ullr should have the shittiest luck, but why should that change now? Why wouldn't this be one last fuck you to Mike Johnson, one more way for him to get ground into the dirt and left alone to pick himself up?

“Yes,” she says, coming a step closer, until he can feel the heat of her, and she might be a whole new goddess, but she still feels like the Michele he knows so well. “You forget, I've already been with Axl, and he was much more interesting as a woman. But luckily for you,” she says, leaning in, grabbing the edges of his shirt and putting her mouth up to his ear, “Frigg has a well-known tendency to sleep around with Odin's brothers. Or didn't you know that myth?”

She's still smiling when she steps back and turns to follow Axl, and for once, not even Anders, slow-clapping behind him, can ruin the moment.

Maybe for once being the big brother isn't so bad after all.

**_III. Anders – In which Anders' lack of work ethic comes in handy._ **

“I'm going to die in here, aren't I? I'll die, surrounded by big fluffy white dresses, and no one will find my corpse for months.”

Okay, here's the thing. When his day had started out, Anders had no intention in the world of spending his valuable time doing something so utterly ridiculous. But then he'd gotten to the office, and Dawn had mentioned something about a meeting with the dog food people, who were incredibly tedious at the best of times – anyhow, one thing leading to another, following Dawn out to the bridal shop had seemed a reasonable solution. Besides, the poor girl really had no taste at all. She'd probably choose something all floofy with those awful puffy sleeves if left to her own devices. So really, he was doing everyone a favor, when it came down to it.

“Maybe if you were nicer to people, someone would care to come looking.” Dawn's voice is a bit muffled, coming as it is from inside a dressing room, and probably from under several layers of tulle and silk and god knows what else they made wedding frocks out of. He'd offer to help, but frankly, the idea of seeing Dawn in her knickers is unappealing for too many reasons to contemplate – no, best to leave that particular temptation under wraps.

Instead, Anders picks up his phone and scrolls to his very favorite number.

“Ty, why am I sitting in a bridal shop right now?”

“Um, I don't know, because it's a place where large numbers of women are known to gather?”

Large numbers of women? He wishes. So far he hasn't seen a soul in here except for Dawn; not a single lusty bridesmaid in sight. “No, Ty. I am sitting here, bored out of my mind, I might add, because you had to go and put a ring on it, my friend. I don't know how you could do this to me, you know how uncomfortable these places make me.”

“Anders, did you call me just to complain?”

“No. Well, yes, actually, but- you don't understand, Ty, this place – it's fucking creepy. I feel like I'm about to go out of my skin.”

He can almost hear Ty rolling his eyes, with that long-suffering expression coming over his face. Sometimes he wonders if Ty ever looks that way for anybody but him. “As hard as it may be for you to believe, matrimony is not actually a death sentence. Goodbye, Anders.”

“Well, that was rude,” he mutters, staring at the screen, until the dressing room door opens and Dawn walks out, surrounded by miles of white fluff. “Dawn, your fiancee just hung up on me. Do you think you could teach him some manners?”

“Ty always hangs up on you,” she points out. “In fact, it's difficult to think of anyone who _doesn't_ regularly hang up on you. Now, since you invited yourself along, you might as well make yourself useful – what do you think?”

“Do you want the honest opinion or the PR opinion?”

“Honest!” Dawn says. It's cute, the way there's always that tiny little bit of real frustration in her voice, like she still expects him to be something other than he is, even after all this time. He'd never admit it, because anything that comes close to being about feelings shouldn't be spoken of in Anders' opinion, especially when the feelings in question are his, but that's one of his favorite things about her.

“Doesn't matter, they were both going to be the same anyhow,” he says. “Makes your bum look big, try the next one.”

“You really are the worst,” she says, giving him an evil look and disappearing once more behind the door.

“What? No girl wants to look like she has a big ass on her wedding day, even I know that. Try something with a little more slink this time.”

The muffled sounds of unzipping and struggling with fabric follow – usually some of his favorite sounds in the world, though he's not really feeling it right now. Too much white in this place, too much soothing music, too much _something_. And he's got the sinking feeling that if anybody sees him in here, they're totally going to think he's the gay best friend.

“Tell Hanna what to get,” Dawn calls, sounding defeated, though why, Anders doesn't know. If there's one thing he has impeccable taste in – well, besides all of the other things he has impeccable taste in – it's women's clothes. “She'll know where to find it.”

“Who the fuck is Hanna?” Meeting one of Dawn's no doubt drippy friends makes up no part of any plans he had for today.

“That'd be me,” a voice says, and though its owner is hidden behind the dresses she's carrying, she sounds promisingly hot, at least. “Hanna Larson,” she says, hanging the dresses up next to the door and turning towards him. “I own the shop.”

Oh, wow. Well, _that_ explains everything.

Anders has always thought that, however poetically Ty might put it, meeting a goddess is like having your soul sucked out through every pore in your body, then shoved back all at once in the biggest static shock ever. Not wholly unpleasant, if you're into that sort of thing, but this – this isn't like Eva, or even Helen or Gaia. He's not even sure he could stand up right now, not unless this woman wanted him to.

To her credit, Hanna barely falters – her smile's a little dimmer, maybe, and she licks her lips before speaking again, but that's it – and he's reminded once more that all things considered, he's still a _minor_ god. “Is there something I can do for you, Mr...?”

“Anders Johnson,” he says, somehow managing to get up and offer both his hand and his smoothest smile. “Future brother-in-law of the lovely Dawn. And totally not gay,” he adds, because even if this is the one woman in all of New Zealand he has absolutely no chance with, she is really, _really_ hot.

“Okay,” she says, crossing her arms, “good to know.”

Alright then, moving on from that tactic. “Hanna – nice to meet you, by the way – we were wondering if you could find us something more form-fitting, more appropriate to the...goddess-like beauty that is Dawn.”

“Anders, you are nothing if not ridiculous,” Dawn calls out, but he's only got eyes for Hanna, meeting her level stare with a smirk that he hopes says, _yeah, I know who you are_.

“I'll just go see what I can find, shall I?” she says finally, all icy politeness and tight barbed smile, and turns on her heel.

Well, this day had just gotten a hell of a lot more entertaining.

“Dawn!” he calls, still watching Hanna's retreating figure. “I'm feeling a sudden craving for pizza.”

Dawn pops out of the dressing room at that, this time in a dress that, he notices absently, is at least closer to the mark, if too ruffly at the tits. “You cannot possibly be serious.”

“Oh, I most definitely am. And make sure Axl delivers it, will you?”

Dawn huffs off, hopefully to find her phone, and Anders sits back in his chair, grinning. “We'll see who's the useless one now, Mike,” he mutters, and settles in to wait.

**_IV. Ty – In which some things are destined._ **

“Fuck!”

Of course, that would be the moment Dawn picks up her phone. “Um, Ty? Are you alright?”

The one thing Ty really hates these days – well, aside from being Hodr, and destiny, and pretty much anything cold and dark – is inconsiderate drivers. “Yes, fine. It's just that's the third time today I've narrowly avoided being made into roadkill.”

“Well, try to keep from being flattened. I much prefer you in one very whole, very capable piece,” she says, and Ty knows just from the hint of spice in her voice that Anders isn't in the office at the moment. “We're still on for tonight, yeah? You'll be off in time?”

“Should be,” he says, drawing his bike up outside his destination. “I'm on my last delivery for the day, and then I am all yours.”

“Just what I like to hear,” Dawn says, and he hangs up and heads into the shop smiling.

Inside, the place is quiet – just some soft music playing – and empty, so he rings the bell at the front desk and waits.

_I wonder if Dawn would like this place_ , he catches himself thinking, before the other part of him, the part that remembers being married to Eva, that remembers all the ways his life could and has gone spectacularly wrong in the past, firmly shuts that down as yet another very bad idea.

Still, she would look beautiful in white.

“Sorry, can I help you?” a voice asks, pulling him out of contemplation and back into the real world.

Except it's not so much the real world, because when he turns around there's that giddy feeling like his soul's gone floating off the ground, which means the woman in front of him is most definitely a goddess.

“I've, um – yes, I have a package for you,” he finally manages to blurt out, handing it over. “And this is going to sound weird, but you seem very familiar to me – have we met?”

She cocks her head and studies Ty for a second, and he's absolutely sure now that he's seen her before somewhere. “No, I don't think so – fuck!” she adds, as the package slips from her hands. “Sorry, I'm not usually so clumsy, I swear. Just one of those weird days, you know?”

Funny that it should be swearing that brings it to mind – or really, more appropriate than funny, considering his brothers and the way they all talk – but that's done the trick. Ty's memory gives up an image of Axl in his ice-carving room, what seems like a lifetime ago; an Axl who was quite a lot prettier and had much bigger breasts than the Axl he's used to. An Axl who'd looked, in fact, exactly like the woman in front of him, give or take some makeup and a haircut.

“You're Frigg,” he says.

He doesn't know quite what he expects from her at that, because if there's one thing he's learned about goddesses, it's that they are unpredictable at best. This one just watches him for a second, like she's trying to make up her mind about something, and then holds out her hand. “Also called Hanna. That might go a ways towards explaining the weirdness.”

“Yeah,” he says. When he takes her hand, he notices not only is it warm, it actually feels _hot_ to him. “I'm Ty, also known as Hodr.”

“Ah,” she says, with a sympathetic grin. “Not the most comfortable god to be, I reckon.”

“It...has its ups and downs,” he admits. “Being the goddess of love and marriage sounds infinitely preferable.”

“It keeps me busy, at least,” Hanna says, and he gets it now, all the racks of wedding dresses around them. “Speaking of which, you're probably really busy, I didn't mean to keep you. Unless...maybe you'd like to get dinner sometime, talk about stuff? I haven't met many others like us,” she says. “I've got a brother, but he's – well, he tries his best, but he's not exactly the most helpful.”

There are so many things he could say to that, like, _You want to hear about brothers? Let me tell you about mine_ , or _Sure, come to dinner with me, meet my entire godly family, save the world_. Instead, he finds himself saying, “Yeah, I actually am pretty busy right now – deliveries and all to make, you know,” and he's heading for the door before she can get another word out. “But I'm sure I'll see you again. You're on my route!”

“Yeah, of course,” she calls, as he practically falls out the door, and the thing of it is, he really likes her. He'd like to get to know her; hell, he'd probably like her as a sister-in-law. And yet...

Hoping against hope that he's not going to get himself smashed into the pavement if he tries this again, he dials his phone and gets back on his bike. “Come on, pick up, pick up...”

“Ty! How are you on this glorious and shining day?”

Well, Olaf's probably stoned, but when has that ever not been the case? “What happens when Axl finds Frigg? No mystical bullshit, just the facts.”

“As you well know, Ty, facts are somewhat thin on the ground here, especially as concerns that particular situation.”

Definitely stoned, which is just fucking perfect. “Yes, but we get our powers, right? Our _full_ powers? Meaning my life will go from pleasantly air-conditioned to blast freezer the moment the happy couple come together?”

“I wouldn't put it so negatively,” Olaf says, and Ty can feel Hodr creeping in around the bitter edges of himself already, like being negative is some kind of fucking choice, rather than the destiny that comes along with this crap, no matter how hard he's pushed against it. “The hope is that we'll also gain full control over our powers.”

“But there's no guarantee of that, right?”

“Ty, in all my many years as a god, I've found there are very few things that _are_ guaranteed.”

“That's what I thought,” Ty mutters.

“Any particular reason for this sudden interest in the Frigg situation?”

“No,” Ty says, probably far too quickly – Olaf may be high, but he isn't stupid. “Or, well, it's just that Dawn and I were a bit worried. Makes planning for the future and all that kind of difficult.”

“I wouldn't be too concerned at the moment. First we have to _find_ her, and as far as I'm aware, we are still right about where we started with that.”

Well, it's now or never. “Yeah, right. Thanks, Grandpa,” Ty says, and hangs up, takes a deep breath, and scrolls to a different number.

“Hi,” Dawn's voice says, and Anders would laugh him off the planet if he ever heard it, but her voice really does feel like a bit of sunshine to Ty. “Please tell me you haven't been run off the road again.”

“No,” he says, stopping his bike on the sidewalk and leaning into the wall. “No, I just – I just wanted to say that I'm on my way home. And that I love you.”

“That's very sweet, Ty. I love you too,” she says, and faintly from the background, Anders' voice calls out something that sounds like _Ugh, stop that romantic crap before I vomit!_

“I'll see you soon,” he says, and starts back up again, back on his way to the only place he has any intention of letting destiny take him.

Someday, he knows, this will surely come back to bite him in the ass; might even be someday very soon, if Axl's feeling particularly reckless with his safety, but for now - 

_Just one more day with her_ , he thinks. _One more day of peace, let me have that much._

One more day, one more week, one more month. And screw destiny.

**_V. Axl – In which Frigg-hunting is a hopeless endeavor._ **

It's not that Axl _hates_ his brothers, exactly. It's just that they can be so, so very frustrating. Especially in the matter of Frigg-finding, at which they seem to work overtime at being extra-spectacularly useless.

Take Mike, for example. Great brother, fairly okay god, and decent bar owner, since he still keeps enough booze around for the lot of them to be sitting here now, drinking for free. But as a Frigg-finder? Complete loser. Maybe it's just because he's on his fifth (or maybe sixth, it's hard to keep track) beer, but Axl's starting to feel like he has to beg, which is not at all right and proper Odin behavior. “Dude, you're the god of the hunt! Can't you just like, hunt her down or something?”

“We tried that, remember?” Well yes, of course Axl remembers; he's not _that_ pissed, at least not yet. He's just...running out of strategies. “Wasn't exactly a raging success. I told you, I need something to go on.”

“What, like a dog with a scent?” Anders snorts. Honestly, Axl's surprised he even showed up, what with Anders being Anders and all. Also with everyone having found out about the whole thing where he's apparently screwing Michele now, which makes it a touch awkward for him to be at Mike's. But if Mike doesn't mind, Axl supposes it's none of his business. “This chick's what, the goddess of love and all that crap? She probably smells like roses. Or sex! Think of like, the world's most delicious pussy. Like Michele, only amplified, and without the edge of possible bone-breaking death.”

“Anders, is there ever a single moment in your life when you're not thinking about sex?” Ty says, and Axl can't quite decide if he looks disgusted or just totally unimpressed by Anders' strategy. Maybe some of both. He'll give Anders this, though – at least he comes up with strategies (well, mostly the same strategy, over and over again), which is more than Ty's ever done. Not that he's blaming Ty, who might just be the only person in the world with worse luck than Axl himself, but still.

“You've known me your whole life, Ty, what do you think the answer to that is?” Anders says, grinning over the rim of his wineglass, and Axl doesn't miss Mike rolling his eyes and turning away. Maybe Mike _does_ want to punch Anders' smug grin back through his face; god knows Axl remembers a time in the not-too-distant past when it was about the only thing he wanted to do.

Come to think of it, that actually gives him an idea. “Maybe I should just follow you around,” he says to Anders, and it's weird, the way it comes out sounding like a challenge when he meant to sound bored. “Frigg's meant to have slept with Odin's brothers, yeah? Can't think of anyone more likely to screw somebody else's wife than you.”

He thinks it's pretty fair to say that Anders looks taken aback at that, but Mike's grinning and Olaf's flat out laughing, so all in all, Axl feels he's scored some points here.

“You have to admit, Anders, you've done more than your fair share of brotherly-wife screwing.” Olaf says, still chuckling, out of the faint cloud of smoke he's built up in his corner.

“Hey hey, that is _not_ fair,” Anders says, sitting up straight and doing that whole belligerent pointing thing he does sometimes. “I've never slept with anyone's wife. Well, okay,” he amends, probably on noticing the disbelief crawling over everyone's faces, “not anyone who was one of _your_ wives, at least.”

“Michele-” Axl points out before Mike has to, cause frankly, Mike's already looking a little pissed off.

“Please, she and Mike were only banging,” Anders says, waving his hand in dismissal. “And they weren't even doing that anymore. Mike's stupid enough to dump her, that is not my problem.”

“Val,” Mike says, quiet and cold as ice, before knocking back the rest of his drink, and _holy shit_ , is he the only one who totally didn't know that?

“Jesus Christ, Anders, you slept with _Val_?” Ty says, so apparently that's a no, and for once Axl's not the only one who wasn't in the loop.

“In my defense, they weren't married yet at the time. And I was twenty-one and stupid. Why'd you think Mike barely spoke to me for a decade?” The thing about it is, Anders doesn't even look sorry, not one tiny bit, and maybe it's because it's been over ten years since it happened, but that still isn't anywhere close to making it okay, in Axl's opinion.

“Gaia,” he says, and he's honestly surprised he doesn't choke on her name, especially when he's saying it to _him_.

“Also not married at the time,” Anders says, and he still doesn't look sorry, but at least he doesn't look so fucking smug anymore either. “And technically, Gaia's _my_ wife if she's anybody's, though the thought of me being stuck with a full-time wife is just horrifying, even if the sex was mind-blowingly awesome-”

So much for Anders not being a dickhead for five whole seconds. “I swear to god, I _will_ smite you-” Axl says, though he doesn't bother with getting up or backing up the threat in any fashion, because he is just about a thousand percent done with Anders and his bullshit at this point.

And also because Ty's interrupting him anyway, with the most horrified look on his face ever. “Oh god. Please tell me you haven't slept with Dawn.”

“Dawn? Fuck no, I would never do that with Dawn.”

“Good – wait, why not? Is she not skanky enough for you?” Oh, wonderful; Axl's pretty sure the temperature in the room just dropped by about ten degrees, and there's frost forming on Ty's bottle.

“Ty, I think I resent the implications of that. Just because the idea of getting it on with Dawn is, quite frankly, deeply appalling-”

“Oh, resent this, you wanker!” Ty makes a dive for Anders, and they both go crashing over backwards, along with Anders' chair; meanwhile Mike's running out from behind the bar shouting and Olaf's just laughing at the chaos. It sort of reminds Axl of some of his earliest memories, really, and he sits back to take it all in.

“If you would just _listen_ ,” Anders says, though his voice is sort of muffled, due to Ty's hand being plastered over his face, “I was going to say it's because she's like my sister, you cock!”

“Oh, your sister?” Ty shouts, twisting to avoid getting a knee to the balls and ending up knocking over a table, bottles and glasses smashing and rolling around. “Just like Val was your sister, you pervert?”

“Nah,” Anders says, sitting up and panting, swiping at a bloody lip. “Val was more like my older brother's hot mistake.”

Oh man, classic Anders fuckup right there, because now-

“Oh, that is _it_!” Mike's got his best frustrated-big-brother voice going, and now it looks like he and Ty are both doing their best to throttle Anders. It'd be a total lie if Axl were to say he's not finding this way more entertaining than he probably should.

Too bad Olaf doesn't seem to agree. “Come on,” he says, standing up, causing a cloud of pot smoke to drift its way over the battlefield, “much as he may deserve it, we can't actually let them kill Anders.”

Axl sighs, but Olaf's probably right; and besides, the world would be a less amusing place without Anders in it to fuck everything up and make all of his brothers look better in comparison.

Unfortunately, his brothers aren't giving up that easily. Between grunts of pain and various Johnsons muttering things like _Ow_ , _Get off me you wanker_ , and _If you weren't such a bloody manwhore_ , somebody's flailing foot catches Axl in the back of the knee, and before he knows it, he's down there on the floor with them, and when one of them (he's pretty sure it was Anders, even if Anders insists later that it was Mike) lands a perfect punch square on Axl's nose, it is _on_.

Between somebody trying to gouge his eyes out, Olaf's shouting, and somebody else trying to twist his nipple off (he's _positive_ that one was Anders), Axl really couldn't say how long it's been when a voice breaks through the haze of battle; a voice that's possibly amused, definitely feminine, and almost but not quite familiar.

“Excuse me? I'm sorry to interrupt...whatever it is that's going on here,” she says, and the five of them probably make for a pretty odd picture – Axl's got Ty in a bear hug and Olaf's just relieved Mike of the bottle he was threatening to brain Anders with – but Axl finds he can't really care about that right now, because _woah_.

Even if the room wasn't doing that weird spinny thing where it feels like the world's shrinking down around him, Axl would still be able to guess exactly who that woman is, since he'd looked just like her that one very confusing time.

“My Lady Frigg,” he says, shoving his brothers off him and standing up, hoping he's managed to not look like too much of a tool.

He supposes not, since she's at least smiling back at him. Or maybe she's laughing at him, but the important thing is, she's _here_ , right in front of him. “Also known as Hanna,” she says. “I guess that explains why I felt like I was being pulled in here, my Lord Odin.”

“Yeah,” he says, grinning like an idiot, “I guess it does.”

Of course, Anders wouldn't be Anders (or Bragi, for that matter) it he didn't need to have the last word in a fight. “See, her? I have definitely never screwed her.”

Well, thank the gods for small favors. “Hi, Hanna,” he says, offering her a hand that he hopes doesn't have anybody's blood smeared on it. “I'm Axl.”


End file.
